US Agency Pushing For Open Government... Almost Last In Rankings Of Open Gov't Agencies

from the practice-what-you-preach dept

The White House tasked the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) with spreading "open government" efforts throughout the US government -- but a recent analysis of what agencies in the government are most open shows that OMB is near the back of the pack. The rankings put the different agencies into three categories: exceeding openness standards, in line with openness standards and... weak on openness. OMB fell into that last group along with the Treasury Department, the Justice Department, the Defense Department and the Energy Department (are any of those really a surprise?).

The study also criticized OMB for talking a lot more about openness than doing anything about openness:

"OMB's plans to improve these issue areas remain overly vague, with almost no listed milestones or schedule for specific actions," the study found. "OMB's plan also does fails to include any information about how the plan was developed, what outreach was done to gather input and ideas, and how it will inform the public about its progress."

This reminds me, actually, that just last week, there was a one-day session on open government policies by the White House... and some found it rather ironic that part of the session was off-the-record. Hint to the US gov't: this openness thing? You're doing it wrong.